Feature Articles - Of Fraud and Force Fast Woven: Domestic Propaganda During The First World War

"Lead this
people into war, and they'll forget there was ever such a thing as
tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit
of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life,
infecting the Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in
the street."

It is one of
history's great ironies that Woodrow Wilson, who was re- elected as a peace
candidate in 1916, led America into the First World War. With the help
of a propaganda apparatus that was unparalleled in world history,
Wilson
forged a nation of immigrants into a fighting whole. An examination of
public opinion before the war, propaganda efforts during the war, and the
endurance of propaganda in peacetime raises significant questions about the
viability of democracy as a governing principle.

Like an
undertow, America's drift toward war was subtle and forceful.
According to the outspoken pacifist Randolph Bourne, war sentiment spread
gradually among various intellectual groups. "With the aid of
Roosevelt," wrote Bourne, "the murmurs became a monotonous chant,
and finally a chorus so mighty that to be out of it was at first to be
disreputable, and finally almost obscene." Once the war was underway,
dissent was practically impossible. "[I]f you believed our going into
this war was a mistake," wrote The Nation in a post-war editorial, "if you
held, as President Wilson did early in 1917, that the ideal outcome would be
'peace without victory,' you were a traitor." Forced to stand quietly on the
sidelines while their neighbors stampeded towards war, many pacifists would
have agreed with Bertrand Russell that "the greatest difficulty was the
purely psychological one of resisting mass suggestion, of which the force
becomes terrific when the whole nation is in a state of violent collective
excitement."

This
frenzied support for the war was particularly remarkable in light of the
fact that
Wilson's
re-election had been widely interpreted as a vote for peace. After
all, in January of 1916, Wilson stated that "so far as I can remember, this
is a government of the people, and this people is not going to choose war."
In retrospect, it is apparent that the vote for Wilson cloaked profound
cleavages in public opinion. At the time of his inauguration,
immigrants constituted one third of the population. Allied and German
propaganda revived old-world loyalties among "hyphenated" European-
Americans, and opinions about US intervention were sharply polarized.
More than 8 million German-Americans lived in this country, and many were
sympathetic to the cause of their homeland. Meanwhile, anti-German
feeling was strong among the upper classes on the Atlantic coast, and was
particularly intense among those with social and business connections to
Britain
or France. Most Americans, however, were not connected to the European
conflict by blood or capital, and were not interested in waging war
overseas.

The
absence of public unity was a primary concern when America entered the war
on
April 6, 1917.
In Washington, unwavering public support was considered to be crucial to the
entire wartime effort. On
April 13, 1917,
Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to promote the war
domestically while publicizing American war aims abroad. Under the
leadership of a muckraking journalist named George Creel, the CPI recruited
heavily from business, media, academia, and the art world. The CPI
blended advertising techniques with a sophisticated understanding of human
psychology, and its efforts represent the first time that a modern
government disseminated propaganda on such a large scale. It is
fascinating that this phenomenon, often linked with totalitarian regimes,
emerged in a democratic state.

Although
George Creel was an outspoken critic of censorship at the hands of public
servants, the CPI took immediate steps to limit damaging information.
Invoking the threat of German propaganda, the CPI implemented "voluntary
guidelines" for the news media and helped to pass the Espionage Act of 1917
and the Sedition Act of 1918. The CPI did not have explicit
enforcement power, but it nevertheless "enjoyed censorship power which was
tantamount to direct legal force." Like modern reporters who participate in
Pentagon press pools, journalists grudgingly complied with the official
guidelines in order to stay connected to the information loop. Radical
newspapers, such as the socialist Appeal to Reason, were almost completely
extinguished by wartime limitations on dissent. The CPI was not a
censor in the strictest sense, but "it came as close to performing that
function as any government agency in the
US
has ever done."

Censorship
was only one element of the CPI's efforts. With all the sophistication
of a modern advertising agency, the CPI examined the different ways that
information flowed to the population and flooded these channels with pro-war
material. The CPI's domestic division was composed of 19
sub-divisions, and each focused on a particular type of propaganda. A
comprehensive survey is beyond the scope of this paper, but the use of
newspapers, academics, artists, and filmmakers will be discussed.

One of the
most important elements of the CPI was the Division of News, which
distributed more than 6,000 press releases and acted as the primary conduit
for war-related information. According to Creel, on any given week,
more than 20,000 newspaper columns were filled with material gleaned from
CPI handouts. Realizing that many Americans glided right past the
front page and headed straight for the features section, the CPI also
created the Division of Syndicated Features and recruited the help of
leading novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These popular
American writers presented the official line in an easily digestible form,
and their work was said to have reached twelve million people every month.

The Division
of Civic and Educational Cooperation relied heavily on scholars who churned
out pamphlets with titles such as The German Whisper, German War Practices,
and Conquest and Kultur. The academic rigour of many of these pieces
was questionable, but more respectable thinkers, such as John Dewey and
Walter Lippmann, also voiced their support for the war. Even in the
face of this trend, however, a few scholars refused to fall in line.
Randolph Bourne had been one John Dewey's star students, and he felt
betrayed by his mentor's collaboration with the war effort. In one of
several eloquent wartime essays, Bourne savagely attacked his colleagues for
self-consciously guiding the country into the conflict. "[T]he German
intellectuals went to war to save their culture from barbarization," wrote
Bourne. "And the French went to war to save their beautiful France!...
Are not our intellectuals equally fatuous when they tell us that our war of
all wars is stainless and thrillingly achieving for good?"

The CPI did
not limit its promotional efforts to the written word. The Division of
Pictorial Publicity "had at its disposal many of the most talented
advertising illustrators and cartoonists of the time," and these artists
worked closely with publicity experts in the Advertising Division.
Newspapers and magazines eagerly donated advertising space, and it was
almost impossible to pick up a periodical without encountering CPI material.
Powerful posters, painted in patriotic colours, were plastered on billboards
across the country. Even from the cynical vantage point of the mid
1990s, there is something compelling about these images that leaps across
the decades and stirs a deep yearning to buy liberty bonds or enlist in the
navy.

Moving
images were even more popular than still ones, and the Division of Films
ensured that the war was promoted in the cinema. The film industry
suffered from a sleazy reputation, and producers sought respectability by
lending wholehearted support to the war effort. Hollywood's mood was
summed up in a 1917 editorial in The Motion Picture News which proclaimed
that "every individual at work in this industry wants to do his share" and
promised that "through slides, film leaders and trailers, posters, and
newspaper publicity they will spread that propaganda so necessary to the
immediate mobilization of the country's great resources." Movies with titles
like The Kaiser: The Beast of Berlin, Wolves of Kultur, and Pershing's
Crusaders flooded American theatres. One picture, To Hell With The
Kaiser, was so popular that
Massachusetts
riot police were summoned to deal with an angry mob that had been denied
admission.

The
preceding discussion merely hints at the breadth of CPI domestic propaganda
activities. From lecture hall podiums and movie screens to the pages
of popular fiction and the inside of payroll envelopes, the cause of the
Allies was creatively publicized in almost every available communication
channel. But this is only part of the story. The propaganda
techniques employed by the CPI are also fascinating, and, from the
standpoint of democratic government, much more significant.

Defining PropagandaThe
word "propaganda" has already been used several times, and the reader may
wonder how this term is being used. The definition of propaganda has
been widely debated, but there is little agreement about what it means.
Some argue that all persuasive communication is propagandistic, while others
suggest that only dishonest messages can be considered propaganda.
Political activists of all stripes claim that they speak the truth while
their opponents preach propaganda. In order to accommodate the breadth
of the CPI's activities, this discussion relies on Harold Lasswell's broad
interpretation of the term. "Not bombs nor bread," wrote Lasswell,
"but words, pictures, songs, parades, and many similar devices are the
typical means of making propaganda." According to Lasswell, "propaganda
relies on symbols to attain its end: the manipulation of collective
attitudes."

Propagandists usually attempt to influence individuals while leading each
one to behave "as though his response were his own decision." Mass
communication tools extend the propagandist's reach and make it possible to
shape the attitudes of many individuals simultaneously. Because
propagandists attempt to "do the other fellow's thinking for him," they
prefer indirect messages to overt, logical arguments. During the war,
the CPI accomplished this by making calculated emotional appeals, by
demonizing Germany, by linking the war to the goals of various social
groups, and, when necessary, by lying outright.

Emotional Appeals
CPI propaganda typically appealed to the heart, not to the mind.
Emotional agitation is a favourite technique of the propagandist, because
"any emotion may be 'drained off' into any activity by skilful
manipulation." An article which appeared in Scientific Monthly shortly after
the war argued that "the detailed suffering of a little girl and her kitten
can motivate our hatred against the Germans, arouse our sympathy for
Armenians, make us enthusiastic for the Red Cross, or lead us to give money
for a home for cats." Wartime slogans such as "Bleeding Belgium," "The
Criminal Kaiser," and "Make the World Safe For Democracy," suggest that the
CPI was no stranger to this idea. Evidence of this technique can be
seen in a typical propaganda poster that portrayed an aggressive,
bayonet-wielding German soldier above the caption "Beat Back The Hun With
Liberty Bonds." In this example, the emotions of hate and fear were
redirected toward giving money to the war effort. It is an interesting
side-note that many analysts attribute the failure of German propaganda in
America to the fact that it emphasized logic over passion. According
to Count von Bernstorff, a German diplomat, "the outstanding characteristic
of the average American is rather a great, though superficial,
sentimentality," and German press telegrams completely failed to grasp this
fact.

DemonizationA second
propaganda technique used by the CPI was demonization of the enemy.
"So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations," wrote
Lasswell "that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a
menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who
the public is to hate." American propaganda was not the only source of
anti-German feeling, but most historians agree that the CPI pamphlets went
too far in portraying Germans as depraved, brutal aggressors. For
example, in one CPI publication, Professor Vernon Kellogg asked "will it be
any wonder if, after the war, the people of the world, when they recognize
any human being as a German, will shrink aside so that they may not touch
him as he passes, or stoop for stones to drive him from their path?"

A
particularly effective strategy for demonizing Germans was the use of
atrocity stories. "A handy rule for arousing hate," said Lasswell "is,
if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed
with unvarying success in every conflict known to man." Unlike the pacifist,
who argues that all wars are brutal, the atrocity story implies that war is
only brutal when practiced by the enemy. Certain members of the CPI
were relatively cautious about repeating unsubstantiated allegations, but
the committee's publications often relied on dubious material. After
the war, Edward Bernays, who directed CPI propaganda efforts in Latin
America, openly admitted that his colleagues used alleged atrocities to
provoke a public outcry against
Germany.
Some of the atrocity stories which were circulated during the war, such as
the one about a tub full of eyeballs or the story of the seven-year old boy
who confronted German soldiers with a wooden gun, were actually recycled
from previous conflicts. In his seminal work on wartime propaganda,
Lasswell speculated that atrocity stories will always be popular because the
audience is able to feel self-righteous indignation toward the enemy, and,
at some level, identify with the perpetrators of the crimes. "A young
woman, ravished by the enemy," he wrote "yields secret satisfaction to a
host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the border."

Anti-German propaganda fuelled support for the war, but it also contributed
to intolerance on the home front. Dachshunds were renamed liberty
dogs, German measles were renamed liberty measles, and the City University
of New York reduced by one credit every course in German. Fourteen
states banned the speaking of German in public schools. The military
adversary was thousands of miles away, but German-Americans provided
convenient local scapegoats. In Van Houten, New Mexico, an angry mob
accused an immigrant miner of supporting Germany and forced him to kneel
before them, kiss the flag, and shout "To hell with the Kaiser." In
Illinois, a group of zealous patriots accused Robert Prager, a German coal
miner, of hoarding explosives. Though Prager asserted his loyalty to
the very end, he was lynched by the angry mob. Explosives were never
found.

The
War to End All WarsEmotional
appeals and simplistic caricatures of the enemy influenced many Americans,
but the CPI recognized that certain social groups had more complex
propaganda needs. In order to reach intellectuals and pacifists, the
CPI claimed that military intervention would bring about a democratic League
of Nations and end warfare forever. With other social groups, the CPI
modified its arguments, and interpreted the war as "a conflict to destroy
the threat of German industrial competition (business group), to protect the
American standard of living (labour), to remove certain baneful German
influences in our education (teachers), to destroy German music - itself a
subtle propaganda (musicians), to preserve civilization, 'we' and
`civilization' being synonymous (nationalists), to make the world safe for
democracy, crush militarism, [and] establish the rights of small nations et
al. (religious and idealistic groups)." It is impossible to make
rigorous statements about which one of these appeals was most effective, but
this is the advantage that the propagandist has over the communications
scholar. The propagandist is primarily concerned with effectiveness
and can afford to ignore the methodological demands of social science.

DishonestyFinally, like
most propagandists, the CPI was frequently dishonest. Despite George
Creel's claim that the CPI strived for unflinching accuracy, many of his
employees later admitted that they were quite willing to lie. Will
Irwin, an ex-CPI member who published several confessional pieces after the
war, felt that the CPI was more honest than other propaganda ministries, but
made it clear that "we never told the whole truth - not by any manner of
means." Citing an intelligence officer who bluntly said "you can't tell them
the truth," G.S Viereck argued that, as on all fronts, victories were
routinely manufactured by American military authorities. The
professional propagandist realizes that, when a single lie is exposed, the
entire campaign is jeopardized. Dishonesty is discouraged, but on
strategic, not moral, grounds.

In
the final months of 1918, as the war drew to a close, the CPI fell under
increasing scrutiny from a war-weary American public and from the Republican
majority that had gained control of Congress. On November 12, 1918, George Creel halted the domestic activities of the CPI. The
activities of the foreign division were ended, amidst great controversy, a
few months later. One might assume that the wartime propagandists then
put down their pens and paintbrushes and returned to ordinary life.
This was not the case.

According to
Lasswell, many former agents of the CPI stayed in Washington and New York
and took advantage of their skill and contacts. Two years later, the
Director of the CPI's Foreign Division argued that "the history of
propaganda in the war would scarcely be worthy of consideration here, but
for one fact - it did not stop with the armistice. No indeed! The
methods invented and tried out in the war were too valuable for the uses of
governments, factions, and special interests." Sigmund Freud's nephew,
Edward Bernays, took the techniques he learned in the CPI directly to
Madison Avenue and became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for
democratic government. "It was, of course, the astounding success of
propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all
departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind,"
wrote Bernays in his 1928 bombshell Propaganda. "It was only natural,
after the war ended, that intelligent persons should ask themselves whether
it was not possible to apply a similar technique to the problems of peace."

This
peacetime application of what was, after all, a tool of war, began to
trouble Americans who suspected that they had been misled. In The New
Republic, John Dewey questioned the paternalistic assumptions of those who
disguised propaganda as news. "There is uneasiness and solicitude
about what men hear and learn," wrote Dewey, and the "paternalistic care for
the source of men's beliefs, once generated by war, carries over to the
troubles of peace." Dewey argued that the manipulation of information was
particularly evident in coverage of post-Revolutionary Russia. The
Nation agreed in 1919, arguing that "what has happened in regard to Russia
is the most striking case in point as showing what may be accomplished by
Government propaganda... Bartholomew nights that never take place,
together with the wildest rumours of communism in women, and of murder and
bloodshed, taken from obscure Scandinavian newspapers, are hastily relayed
to the US, while everything favourable to the Soviets, every bit of
constructive accomplishment, is suppressed."

When one
considers the horrible legacy of the war, it is tempting to pin complete
responsibility for American involvement on hate-mongering militarists in the
CPI. Such retroactive condemnation is no more complex than a wartime
slogan. Ultimately, their guilt is less important than the questions
their activities raised about the role of propaganda in a democratic
society.

Democratic
theory, as interpreted by Jefferson and Paine, was rooted in the
Enlightenment belief that free citizens could form respectable opinions
about issues of the day and use these opinions to guide their own destiny.
Communication between citizens was assumed to be a necessary element of the
democratic process. During the first world war, America's leaders felt
that citizens were not making the correct decisions quickly enough, so they
flooded the channels of communication with dishonest messages that were
designed to stir up emotions and provoke hatred of Germany. The war
came to an end, but propaganda did not. For the past seven decades,
those who lead our nation, along with those who seek to overthrow it, have
mouthed the ideals of Jefferson while behaving like Bernays.

Is
propaganda compatible with democracy, or does it undermine the population's
ability to think critically about world events? What happens when
simplistic, emotional appeals are endlessly repeated? During the war, Bourne
complained that "simple syllogisms are substituted for analysis, things are
known by their labels, [and] our heart's desire dictates what we shall see."
Could this description apply equally to a political climate in which slogans
like "Three Strikes, You're Out," "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and "Just Say No"
are treated as if they were actual policies for dealing with social needs?

What of the
propagandist's argument that the complexity of the modern world makes
obsolete the Enlightenment faith in popular wisdom? It is impossible for one
person to simultaneously be an expert in foreign policy, labour disputes,
the environment, the educational system, health care, constitutional law,
and scientific regulation. Even the President is forced to rely on the
advice of key advisors. Should America follow Bernays' prescription
and accept the wisdom of "a leadership democracy administered by the
intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses?" Or is
"leadership democracy" simply one stage of our democratic development? Could
it someday be replaced by something more far reaching?

What
contribution will emerging communication technologies make to the
dissemination of propaganda? Does the myth of "interactivity" legitimize an
unbalanced social relationship, or does it make it possible for the audience
to challenge the propagandist? The hosts of radio talk shows claim that
theirs is a democratic medium, but callers are screened in advance and
filtered through a three-second time delay. Are truly interactive
tools on the horizon?

The
important difference between our "leadership democracy" and a totalitarian
state is that we are allowed to raise questions such as these.
However, history shows that, in times of political crisis and social
dislocation, this freedom is one of the first to disappear. As we
approach the end of the twentieth century, finding answers to these
questions is more important than ever.

Article contributed by
Aaron Delwiche (Doctoral candidate in the School of Communications at
the University of Washington).

Saturday, 22 August, 2009Aaron Delwiche

Battle Police were military policemen deployed behind an attack to intercept stragglers.